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GIS and Research

I'm an experienced GIS professional, with a primary focus on decision support, remote sensing, automation, optimization, custom software, and tool development. I primarily work in ArcGIS and code in Python using the arcpy package, but also have experience outside of that environment, having completed analysis projects using QGIS and Earth Engine, and visualization projects using Leaflet and D3.

Many of my projects live primarily as code, with results that aren't available as maps or cartographic products. You can browse those projects on the Code page, see a partial list of projects I've worked on at CWS here, and see a selection of other projects below.

Preferred Desktop GIS Systems

ArcGIS

QGIS

GDAL/OGR

Preferred Web GIS

ArcGIS Server

PostGIS

Leaflet

D3.js

Google Earth Engine

ArcGIS Online

Selected Projects

For a class, I assessed flow regulation on the Yampa River in western Colorado and the adjoining segments of the Green River in Colorado and eastern Utah. I used a database of dams in the region from the Central...

After Hurricane Harvey hit, the Natural Hazards Research Group wanted to assess the extent of the flooding as it related to mapped floodplains, as part of ongoing research into flood insurance and hazard mitigation nationwide to inform the National...

I write a lot of spatial data analysis code using ArcGIS's Python package, arcpy. Sometimes we need to automate map generation as part of that work, but with the split of the arcpy.mapping library between ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro,...

I receive a number of requests for additional instruction from former students who have taken one class or another. I decided to combine my tutorials for water and ecosystem analysis in ArcGIS into a single book on LeanPub, which...

I led a team of people using FEMA's Hazus-MH (Multi-Hazard) software to model flood risk to 2 dozen Illinois communities as part of a larger project to measure perceived vs actual risk of flood in those communities. Hazus can...

I created this static map as part of Nicholas Pinter's Natural Hazards Mitigation Group's analysis of flood inundation in the 2016 flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The corresponding interactive map can be found here.

In response to flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as a result of storms in August 2016, we detected flooding using satellite imagery to determine the extent of inundation as it compared to mapped floodplains. The darker blue shows flood...

http://nicksantos.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/crop_economics.mp4
For this project, I guided a first time web mapper in how to present the data visually and how to implement that presentation in code. The map uses Leaflet and D3 to provide interactive visualization of California economic data...

I built a web map viewer for the PISCES California fish species range data. The data is served by ArcGIS Server and the viewer is a mix of a coworker's custom map viewer that uses the ArcGIS API and...

PISCES is a set of ArcGIS tools and data for managing and analyzing the ranges of California's 133 native fish taxa. Data is stored as a standard relational database, increasing the power over many typical GIS approaches, and allowing...

As part of a class where students gained extensive experience in the field, my colleague Sarah Yarnell led a team of researchers at the Center for Watershed Sciences that developed a virtual field trip as a pre-field trip teaching...

http://nicksantos.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/rim_fire.mp4
The UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences has long term study sites at the confluence of the Tuolumne and Clavey rivers, near where the Rim Fire of 2013 started. As part of these long term study sites, we captured...

Time Lapse Hydrography - Tuolumne and Clavey Rivers 2012 with Temperatures from Center for Watershed Sciences on Vimeo.
Our office put out time lapse cameras and data loggers on many rivers in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains in an attempt...

The Center for Watershed Sciences had a project to model various scenarios for land restoration in the Cosumnes River floodplain, largely in the context of the Swainson's Hawk. Toward the end of the project, we wanted to develop a...